That expected failure injects a greater uncertainty into the nation's political and economic landscape heading into a volatile election year....

Some critics, mostly Republicans, have faulted President Barack Obama for keeping his distance from the committee for months after submitting his own deficit plan. But the outcome could create a political opening for Mr. Obama, bolstering a presidential campaign strategy of running against an ostensibly incompetent Congress.

40 comments:

Both sides crave failure. Whatever "compulsory" cuts are indicated by their failure, they will figure out ways to spend the money anyway. In the meantime they can blame each other during the coming year, and the nation loses again.

At the same time it reinforces the voting public's view of Obama as "not a leader" by extending his habit on the major issues (health care legislation, the debt ceiling, and now this deficit reduction effort.) Voters, even those who are not deeply involved in politics, can see that he does not stake out a position (early or late). It's as if he doesn't have the courage to put down a well defined marker.

Shrug. The committee was destined to fail, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi made sure of the with their picks. I wrote it off at that time and see no point in worrying about it now, it was failure by design from the get go.

I get so weary of the press painting this deadlock as congressional incompetence. It's not. It's the shit hitting the fan, and it's going to get a whole lot smellier before it's over.

Our federal government is out of money, and our economy is in the toilet. Each political party has deeply held but diametrically opposed answers to fixing the problems.

The Democrats seek to improve the economy by repeated Keynesian stimuli, and are loath to undercut government spending in a recession. Their success as a party also rests on keeping their constituents palms greased with federal cash.

The Republicans want to loosen the tax and regulatory burden on businesses so that the many businesses who are sitting on their profits can feel safe re-investing it. They don't want to raise taxes on wealth producers in a down economy. The success as a party depends on fighting to let wealth producers keep their money.

Both sides have legions of economists on their side. Both sides earnestly believe that they have the answer.

This is not incompetence. This is a fundamental clash of governing philosophies.

The amount of "savings" they are charged with finding is about a trillion dollars over ten years. Nothing, actually.

And the "cuts" will be in the rate of growth not the actual cuts the rest of us have to impose on ourselves. Democrats and Republicans alike would do the nation a great service if they would simply come clean about that one significant rhetorical devise. That lie they repeat.

Michael, you are right. That's why the punitive result of supercommittee deadlock isn't so punitive, and it's exactly why they have no progress on a plan. They don't care if they incur the default. Each side saves face for not caving.

Imagine, just as a an exercise, that the country was at a near existential fork in the road, a turning point, or as was said above the shit is hitting the fan, or at least the fan is being fired up and something is starting to stink.

What would congress do in such times. Look familiar?

The only real surprise will be if the heroes actually show up and we recognize them?

The Supercommittee is nothing but theater, since Congress only has the power to make this year's budget. They have no say as to what the budget looks like in 2022, which is what they've been arguing about.

The solution for Congress being seen as feckless and puerile is for Congress to not be feckless and puerile. Unfortunately, we have Whore House Harry Reid in charge of the Senate, and Weepy Boehner in charge of the House.

How 2 supposedly divergent philosophies can result in a Corsican Brothers farce starring these 2 pukes is damning to our whole system of government.

The whole point of the supercommittee was that it would fail. The "automatic" cuts were agreed upon from the start, but this way they have political cover.

The point is that there is no such thing as an automatic cut. This Congress only has the power to pass this year's budget - any recommendation that this Congress may make on future budgets is purely advisory in nature.

The Supercommittee is a lot like a blog comments section - a bunch of people arguing about things they have no control over.

There would be no need for "supercommittees" stuck in a "partisan deadlock" if this president and senate would bother to even write a budget that is passable.

We're now pushing 3 years since the US Senate passed a budget. 3 years. Imagine running your business without a budget in that time frame.

All that most politicians in government want to do is spend. And what is happening in this "supercommittee" is proof positive that once government gets comfortable spending money, it will never get cut. Ever.

The "Supercommittee" never was anything but BS, since it could never "find" anything but what the leadership told it to find, and with the people selected to sit on the committee, it was a given that it was not going to take orders from the leadership.

The failure of the debt super committee changes nothing. It was a terrible idea--a punt, really--and doomed to achieve nothing. It was just an admission that our present legislators are incapable of dealing with a serious problem in a rational way.

It's going to take more than one election cycle, and probably a trip into at least the upper reaches of the financial abyss, before anything is done.

The super-committee was made to fail. It's a fig leaf for the actual deal, which is the automatic cuts that happen when it fails. It was never anything else. No cuts were possible without going through the theater of a committee staffed with people guaranteed to be incapable of compromise.

The super-committee was made to fail. It's a fig leaf for the actual deal, which is the automatic cuts that happen when it fails.

I have serious doubts that Congress is even going to hold itself to those triggers.

As far as AA's posit of an Obama opening re the committee's failure, cross reference that with last week's Chris Mathews interview. Here's a guy, Tingles you might call him, once completely in Obama's bag (no pun). In the interview, he complains sharply about POTUS' complete disengagement, that members of Congress are complaining that they never hear from the administration.

If hacks like Matthews can see this, a strategy of anti-Congress isn't going to work.

Politically incompetent Congress??? How about the President, who convened his own personal debt commission last December, let them complete their exercise and issue their recommendation, and then elevated his princely nose and blew the whole thing off?